Money, Money, Money

There I was in my car, doing the very best in social distancing.  This meant I sat in the car while The Doc’s cat, Dust Bunny, was in the vet’s office getting a shot.  The Vet’s assistants were providing curbside service, allowing me to read a book in peace and quiet.  Not everything about the quarantine is all that bad.

At a knock, I hit the button to lower the window.  “Bunny’s ready to leave, they will bring him out in just a minute.  All you have to pay is for the cost of the vitamin shot, $3.50,” said the young assistant standing just outside the passenger window.

“Great,” I answered while fumbling my wallet open.  “Have you got change for a sawbuck?” She looked at me as if I was speaking Ferengi.

I blame Rex Stout’s book, Buried Caesar, which is the one of his very best (although the dialogue is from America during the Great Depression).  This happens every time I read a good book: by the time I finish it, my vocabulary changes and I start talking like the protagonist.  Once, after re-reading Heinlein’s Moon is a Harsh Mistress, I spent an entire week lecturing about the battles of Alexander the Great, but delivered the lectures in pidgin English with a handful of Chinese profanity.

I explained that a sawbuck was a ten-dollar bill.  By the time I got the cat home, I had made a mental list of a lot of old obsolete terms for money.  Sort of a history of money list.

The sawbuck is relatively easy.  As you can see, the very first $10 bill, issued in 1861, used a Roman numeral for ten on the reverse of the bill.  The X resembled the sawbuck used to hold logs while they were cut into convenient length.  For the same reason, a double sawbuck is $20.  It is fascinating that even though this design was dropped in 1880, even after almost a century and a half, the term is still being used, except by veterinarian assistants.  From the photo at right, you can also see where we get the term “greenback”.

For longevity, few terms have stayed around as long as ‘buck’ for a single dollar.  This word traces it origins back to early colonial days when deerskins were used as a form of medium of exchange in places where hard currency was hard to come by.  The earliest written reference is a 1748 journal entry by Pennsylvania pioneer Conrad Weiser. The trader used the term frequently, with the first occasion being on page 41 of the journal when he wrote that "a cask of whiskey shall be sold to you for five bucks." 

During the colonial period, specie (coins) were relatively rare, and British coins were especially hard to come by.  Spain was bringing vast quantities of silver out of Mexico, so the Spanish Dollar was widely used around the world.  So many of them were used in the colonies that not only did the fledgling United States eventually mint dollars instead of pounds, but since the colonists cut the Spanish Dollars into eight pie-shaped pieces to make smaller denominations, to this day we use “two-bits” to mean a quarter.  Now you know what the pirates meant by pieces of eight.

Americans weren’t the only people to physically cut money into pieces to make smaller denominations.  The practice in England dates back to the 14th century and is why we refer to rich people as being in the chips. 

Lots of slang terms for money derive from poor translations from other languages.  A fin is $5, because in High German, a finuff is a five-pound-note, and has been used in the United States since the early nineteenth century.  A duck is a $2 dollar bill (and the two of clubs in Pinochle) because of the French word deux, most likely entering the vernacular from Louisiana.  Gelt, moola, and masuma are all Yiddish term for money, lucre is 14th century Old French word, but my favorite has to be “wad”, as in a wad of cash.  It started out as the Latin wadda, meaning a bundle, changed into the Old English wadde, for a bundle of cash.  But, for the best truly international mishmash of foreign words, it is hard to beat simoleons, a mixture of simon—a British slang for a six-pence, and Napoleons—a French currency.

Note.  Yes, I can work Napoleon into just about any topic.  At least I didn’t mention Wellington.  Oh, wait, that’s a British slang for a five pound note.

Some of the slang from other countries is downright bizarre.  The Canadians talk bout Loonies and Toonies, the Australians have lobsters and pineapples, and in England, it takes twenty ponies to make one monkey.  In Greece, you can get paid in spoondolicks while in Denmark a toad means a thousand Euros.   In Spain, you can pay for your dinner with pasta, a local term for money.   

There is one term for money that we have all heard about, but few know what it really means.  At long last, it is time to explain what gold-pressed-latinum really is.  Latinum, as any fan of Star Trek knows, is a rare silver-colored liquid metal that was used as currency by the Ferengi Alliance, the Cardassians, and many other worlds. 

The silver liquid metal was so hard to measure, that for convenience, latinum was suspended within lumps of worthless gold.  The result was as pleasing to the touch as it was to look at. Gold-Pressed-Latinum is the ultimate money, or as it says in the 75th Rule of Acquisition: "Home is where the heart is but the stars are made of latinum." 

All of this reminds me of a very old joke.  A psychiatrist visited a local restaurant and asked to speak to the manager.  Speaking quietly, in a corner, the doctor explained that he ran a nearby sanitarium where he had a special group of patients that needed an outing, a field trip.  The doctor explained that the patients behaved normally, and to all outward appearances were perfectly normal people.

The manager, reassured by the doctor’s words, agreed to reserve a table for the large group, and they set a date.  Then the doctor explained, that there was one small peculiar trait, that he asked the restaurant to ignore.

“At the end of the meal,” the doctor explained.  “All the patients will want to individually pay you in bottle caps.  Please, whatever you do, don’t say anything, just accept the bottle caps as if they were money, and I’ll settle the bill with you once they are on the bus.”

The manager agreed to the strange request, and less than a week later a dozen patients and the doctor arrived for their meal.  The manager was quite pleased that everyone was having a great time, the patients manners were excellent, and the only observable difference from any other group was the excellent caliber of table talk during the meal.

After the last plate was cleared, and the after dinner coffee enjoyed, the manager presented each patient with a check, and just as the doctor had predicted, he was paid in an assortment of bottle caps, with a generous pile of caps left on the table as a tip.  Then the patients filed out of the restaurant and boarded the sanitarium bus parked in front of the restaurant.

As the manager hands the check for the evening to the doctor, he says, “This was a great night, I would have never known any of those people were patients.  I truly hope you return soon.”

“Thank you,” replied the psychiatrist.  “I think everything went superbly, you have no idea how much you have helped them in their treatment.”

Looking down at the bill in his hand, the doctor said, “Everything seems to be in order here.  I wonder, do you have change for a manhole cover?”

I have to take the cat back for a shot next week.  I wonder what would happen if I paid them in bottle caps.